THE GRATEFUL DEAD'S Jerry Garcia once called Steve Kimock his favorite unknown guitarist. So it was only fitting that after Garcia's death in 1995, the Dead turned to Kimock as the great Garcia's heir apparent.

The surviving members drafted him to fill the lead guitar chair in the post-Grateful Dead bands the Other Ones, Phil Lesh & Friends, Bob Weir's Ratdog and the Rhythm Devils, featuring Dead drummers' Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann.

With those major touring bands, Kimock went from playing clubs and small halls to performing for tens of thousands in cavernous sports stadiums and arenas.

For a thoughtful, creative musician that Relix magazine dubbed "the Guitar Monk," it was like going from the monastery into the maelstrom.

"Working with those guys was a valuable experience," he says from his home in Pennsylvania, then adds with a chuckle, "I'm grateful I was offered that opportunity. It was nothing if not educational."

Not that it was entirely unexpected. Kimock once asked Garcia how his intricate, almost chamber music-like guitar work fared in stadiums of roaring Deadheads.

Rather than venture an answer, Garcia invited him to sit onstage behind his amplifier when the Grateful Dead played at Madison Square Garden in New York.

"The lights came up and the people went nuts," he recalls. "In that moment, there was this focus of energy on the stage from the crowd that, I swear to God, was going to stop my heart it was so powerful.

"And then the music started and the sound that came out of the speaker was the loudest, most God awful noise I'd ever heard in my entire life," he says, laughing. "It made no sense to me."

With his current quartet, the erstwhile Marin guitar hero performs on Sunday night in the Session Room at the Hopmonk Tavern in Novato. It's the kind of small, intimate setting he prefers.

"Beyond a certain size there's no way to have everyone's attention without giant production values," he remarks. "Having a smaller space rewards the audience with a good listening experience."

Before he moved back to his native Pennsylvania a decade ago, Kimock had made a name for himself as a co-founder of Zero, an improvisational jazz-rock group that also featured the late Quicksilver Messenger Service guitarist John Cipollina, No. 32 in Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

He'll reunite with some of his surviving Zero bandmates on April 6 at the Sebastopol Community Center, a benefit concert for the Seva Foundation.

Kimock had originally moved to Marin with fellow Pennsylvanians the Goodman Brothers in the mid-'70s, at the tail end of the hippie migration to the county. He knew he'd come to the promised land when, unbeknownst to him, he'd rented a pad in San Rafael that just happened to be next door to Ali Akbar Khan's college of North Indian classical music.

"I woke up on my first day and heard this music from students playing outside on a beautiful summer morning in California," he recalls. "I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was one of universe's enduring jokes on me."

Kimock took some classes at the school and tried his hand at the sarod, the guitar-like stringed instrument that Khan played better than anyone on Earth. But he realized that he would need another lifetime to master it, and he concluded that he would be better served to concentrate on the guitar. But Khan's influence can still be heard in his cerebral guitar work on electric, acoustic, lap and pedal steel guitars.

In Pennsylvania, Kimock is in close proximity to his son, drummer John Morgan Kimock, who practically grew up onstage with his dad, and other members of his family. He lives in an old farmhouse about 10 miles from where he was born. The spread has a barn large enough for his collection of guitars and for a small, computer-based recording studio.

He's also able to rehearse there with his current quartet — keyboardist Bernie Worrell, a founding member of Parliament-Funkadelic; drummer Wally Ingram, who has toured and recorded with multi-instrumentalist David Lindley; and bassist Andy Hess, formerly of Gov't Mule and the Black Crowes.

They will arrive in the Bay Area this week fresh from concerts in Tokyo, Osaka and Yokohama, Japan. Weir grabbed him for a special guest appearance on his "Weir Here" webcast on March 27 at TRI Studios in San Rafael. With his full band, he plays the Hopmonk Tavern in Novato on March 31.

Asked to describe the style of music the group is exploring these days, he responds in his usual deliberate, almost professorial, manner.

"A little bit of everything applicable to the musical chemistry involved," he says. "Bernie handles most of the vocals and Wally and I have common history with David Lindley's music — a whole rock and reggae and good-humored influence that we both gravitate to."

A serious student of the guitar, Kimock is known for performing while leaning on a tall stool near the back of the stage, out of the limelight. But, with maturity, he seems to have loosened up some, even singing a song or two, something he never did with any of his previous bands.

"I'll occasionally get pushed into doing do a novelty tune," he confesses, laughing. "I don't do it too often. But my arm can be twisted."